Ian Caswell, UCL (Chair)
Roohi Ghosh, Cactus Communications (Co-chair)

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A group focused on open peer review to share collective experience, provide recommendations, or produce documents or shared ideals as a result, (please note, there is currently no ethics guidance from COPE about open peer reviewing). This aims to be inclusive of those from large publishers who may be established in some aspects, alongside those who may be individually running a form of open peer review on a single journal, but also from across disciplines.

What is open peer review? How does it work? What are the benefits of open peer review, and should we be moving towards a more open and transparent review model? These types of questions are not so straightforward to answer and it almost always depends upon who and what journal answers it. In April 2017, a systematic review of open peer review was published online in F1000Research (itself an innovative model of open peer review). It concluded: “Open peer review has neither a standardized definition, nor an agreed schema of its features and implementations. The literature reflects this, with a myriad of overlapping and often contradictory definitions.” This seems more evident now as open science is taken up more and more within the research community.

This special interest group aims to provide a forum for those working or interested in open peer review to meet, reflect, share experiences and exchange ideas, especially those who work in small teams, or even individually. Expanding on the scope, the group's overarching goal is to advocate for the adoption of open peer review as a necessary step in the evolution of academic publishing. The group aims to convey the urgency of embracing transparency and openness in the peer review process, emphasizing that this approach is not only beneficial but also crucial in the current academic landscape. Ultimately, the aim is to foster a shift towards making open peer review the norm rather than the exception. It seeks to facilitate discussions, provide resources, and encourage the development of practical guidelines that make open peer review an attainable and straightforward process for journals and researchers alike.